If both sides had failed to come to an agreement, the duty would have been raised to an average of 47.6 per cent two months after it went into effect.

China’s Ministry of Commerce announced Saturday that it welcomed the decision.

Ministry spokesman Shen Danyang said that leaders of both China and the EU have expressed willingness to settle the solar panel dispute through negotiations,

Shen added that ‘the proper settlement of the solar panel dispute will also prove beneficial to the development of clean energies globally’.

The EU expressed satisfaction with the offer of a price undertaking submitted by China’s solar panel exporters.

“We found an amicable solution in the EU-China solar panels case that will lead to a new market equilibrium at sustainable prices,” EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht.

Chinese companies produce 80 per cent of the world’s solar panels.

Price undertaking is permitted by the WTO and EU laws.

It is an alternative form of trade measures that replaces a duty by a price undertaking based on a minimum import price, according to a press release from the European Commission on Saturday.

Reuters quoted an EU diplomatic source as saying that the agreed price was 0.56 euro cents per watt, near the spot price for Chinese solar panels in July in Europe. China will also be allowed to meet about half Europe’s solar panel demand, if taken at last year’s levels, asserted the EU official.

57 founding members, many of them prominent US allies, will sign into creation the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank on Monday, the first major global financial instrument independent from the Bretton Woods system.

Representatives of the countries will meet in Beijing on Monday to sign an agreement of the bank, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. All the five BRICS countries are also joining the new infrastructure investment bank.

The agreement on the $100 billion AIIB will then have to be ratified by the parliaments of the founding members, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said at a daily press briefing in Beijing.

The AIIB is also the first major multilateral development bank in a generation that provides an avenue for China to strengthen its presence in the world’s fastest-growing region.